There are businesses that require exceptionally quick response to customer orders. Fast food operations are such a business and require immediate team effort to respond to customer requests. This places considerable pressure on the preparation/team system to communicate order knowledge and work cooperatively to achieve a changing mission while maintaining cleanliness and quality. Many fast food operations use headsets, fixed microphones for relaying orders by voice, or point-of-sale data driven displays to relay orders. Oftentimes orders are not heard, heard incorrectly or not seen quickly enough to respond acceptably to satisfy customers. Further, custom order requests can be missed. Crew members in these environments work as a team. One crew may begin cooking hamburger patties while a second assembles the last batch of cooked or ‘held’ patties into sandwiches and a third obtains a box of patties from a walk-in freezer. With increased customer traffic (e.g., a large group of students arrive after school or a bus stops for lunch), the coordination gets even more difficult. If one or more of the crew is new and in training, efficiency will lessen and quality, response times and customer satisfaction are jeopardized. Fast food employee retention is on average short so several crew may be in training at any given time.
Therefore there exists a need for improved devices and methods for providing better communication, coordination, training and crew response. These system support improvements need to be individualized, just in time and automated. It should validate activities such as facility and equipment cleaning, store opening/closing, staff coordination, response to point-of-sale (POS) orders, crew changes, and product delivery speeds. It should ease the burden of management due to crew turnover and reduce product risks from unqualified crew performance. Further, a need exists for a device and system to track and improve crew retention, productivity, quality and cleanliness. Such a system should do so without distracting from normal operations, crew interaction and customer experience. It should also provide management and store ownership with broader and more-timely information, recommendations and governance support.